Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

Script
shifts slipstream
past word scarcity passes
to give vengeance to thought-words
failing to nail the slooped mind-gap
felt till times of overload

language tricked into facile forms
omit the shit
scrap the crap
lift the mist
clean acid-sharp tongue
straight-poison-dart effective words

after a fashion
settle into a river of consciousness
makes me think of meaning of life
or life of meaning
meaning I’ve got a life
lifelong living with some meaning

meaning changed
as much as change is predictable
or thinkable
or describable
leaving fellows behind
leaving behind minds
as big as worlds

listen to the people
tease to please
die to please
please please me

talk with some guts
make a sense at last
mother-sense

senseless sense of self
absorbing every cell
to exclude or alter any ego-sense
by sense-free logic
gutless friendless
less lost than woebegone

into meanness of simplicity soul
starved of the hard sunlight
and the soft sundown
which begets caring self
encloses others on a larger scale

with laughing waves of riotous cheering screaming joys
as the wind demands
it’s thrilling

exhilarates
bubbles my brain
twists my torso
runs my legs
into the swarming sea

alive with all meaning
microbe sold to strike the body
joyously splashing each wave
bounding solid pleasure
to every cell proton-pinched to giggles
spasms clawing water air everywhere
sinking sand shale on toes
goes heavenly

thought not bought
caught not taught
thrown not blown
spent out
spilling ocean-full
watering powering stone to change scale
pales human powers to dust particles

unlike sand to the land
walk without words
by the consciousness stream
seems living to move eons
past and forward
sit still and see the sound running
never running out
sands of time
waters of eternity

give scope for endless variations of the word
thought or said
whispering traces like smells remembered today
away from mindless passions
lusts which only filled crack of good humour
until going to seed

seedy or seedless in the name
main man slough off
to ease trees of another good source
of filling succour

sucker mothers suckle calm babes in the wood
can’t see for this tree
would-be grown-ups

could a wrong word create murderous intent
or harping carping fish husbands and wives
futures seeded and warm-wombed into bodies

that walk around with selves
and think things understandable
having to know the question before asking
and in asking answers create themselves
not as a pedestrian pedestrian
my mortality walks with me
in the theory and imagination
of my imminent death
near sudden obliteration

practice makes less than perfect
surviving sense
that the last revolutions wrestled driver-control
makes my tender flesh dead meat
seconds away
step by soft step

sink to the shifting soil
under the seamed and seamy streets
seem to settle
to tracing tall trees
sinking serrated leaves
teeth-strong into capital centres
of this plane planet

plainly making a gaian takeover
or makeover to backtrack

for the tree sees our trailing trips
dips quips into flippancy of the life faith
without grace
no trace
to strongly lace
us earthwise

blinkered into better buy highs
and shovelled into moving trolleys
shaped to transient bars
afraid to stop
drop the slide guard

move in celebration of the non-essential
unserious nature of changing places
and naturally
appears positive at an unruly rate
sometimes aligned with sunshining mood swings

a good base for a new world faith
all believe the end of time
sun dimmed cool spool
hell’s furnace frozen for a change
and sinners ice-packed for eternal freshness
unable to produce needless language forms
to warn saints
in escape
unable to read signs as always hit or miss

miss you
liking I
other stroking ego
only feel for supreme self
know well the shelf

misread the miscue
to self-putdown or self-hope

can’t cope
black and white words hurt ears
recycle renewed forests
bring ease with trees
paper planes flying subterranean trip

beware careless care ecology
logic lore slows to cold calculation
with little actions and large words
to mishear
classless confusion’s rape of private existence
demanded by manners

the mannerly man classing manmade others
into small pinpricking crises
made senseless by the quiet olive grove
or silent quick stream

minding how the body matters
mulling muddies powers
to bright rebirth
fast as the minutes pass
to last long hours in memory’s folds
slips out to unguard you
provoked by subtle sense data
to resurge a little longing

alongside overwhelming current misconceptions
if thought all wonder
at previous light and dark swings
and rapid roundabouts
fail to measure time’s speed
lying in some miserable confusion
slows to concentrated awareness of bodyworks

while suddenness of joys
flips the time switch
full-speed janus-faced
defies comfort measure
while peeling a feeling
stroking an emotion
this word lasts long eons

to appear standing in the slipped sad experience of verbosity
disappears till time’s crawling creation
to draw smiling strength from the length
of life’s prescient pleasure
through the unsayable
but in sprite magic words

by way of granted special grasp
spiritual splendid spliced
each state measure made by its converse
preaching and teaching
falling and failing short

causing blemishes and blooms

while the soulroot seeks danger to know safety
company to secure solitude
malaise to pleasure health
sin to savage forgiveness
dark to see the light
hard-lived experience
to understand theory words

complete neatly fall into view
places overload
flips the tripswitch
to mad sad badlands
or easy ecstasy
with no distance between equidistant continui

while the new young seek treatment for unexperience
in indigestible consumables
spitting hard plastics to the wind
while still sickly bored
with having to be alive
with fast meanings to internalise
newly daily
hour by drastic hour
day by rainy day

play is tasked hard work
effort declined in favour of the next flavour
created by the happy tripped-out scientist from the dna
of obscure lives
or synthesised with those recently discarded goblets
spastic movements reduced to finger-licking
hand-controlled happy skips in cyber space
within furious interactive screens
kissing the arse of the latest speed queen
fucking and sucking computer-wise

till moving in wide arcs
through diffuse post-every-modernist
structuralist
enlightenment spent

needs are newly manufactured
to everything in blasé banality
where the other is now emboldened
as embodiments
of pick-and-mix sexuality

sensationally constricted news is
choose from gay to any lay
heter to homo
to let’s try bi for a high
before the next low

when the thinker thinks I’m thinking
I might fight the freedom fight
success foretold in the opiate marxist word

just wait a while
to homage master materialist
determined to outwit idealist propaganda

but my time walks away
and I’m right with it
slow time in despair
to speed of laser light time
of mindless frenzies
proving time’s protean wiles catch me out every way
and warns off long revolution wait

to spread dis-ease in all ideologies
to accept dial-time’s savage betrayal of body-time
is a lost cost
of every self
in the produced object

alienated wanderings
when faced with unstructured possibilities
unrecognisable choices
feed the colossal betrayal-fixers
latitating with liberating theologies
selling quickfit survivalist life modes
depleting the soft jocular spirit-sellers
icke-like charging material fee
on facile pretence
that only serious souls apply for the loose lie

and human qualities trick
without recourse to dialectic debate
to elucidate and elongate talk of trust
say

to square I need to trust you
with I need you to put me first
I need you to lie to me
deny for me
blind me
bind me
be me

in sad contast to the natural magic of
self loves’ iriscopic viewfinder
illuminating solipsistic certainty of current existence
with hints of tantalising edges of colour
leaving traces of futures and pasts

with a neat kaleidoscopic knack
feels born to live
know the how
born to die
cry the why

surety speaking interrupts with some unnecessary soundbites
unfiltered to jeopardise the trip
hinder with haggling

as pretentious denial of freudian whimsy
into all the good slips cracked and stirring

soulbites to dazzle and daze
coiled in slow-moving spirals
admired full-blown by sisters

strong in uncertainty
powered by paradox
undeluded by tricksy fun
unfractured by this lexicon levity
steady
still
silent ..............

till take-up time returns to taste
raw flavours coming through

enjoy peaceful dissatisfaction
live the examination of disquiets

surreptitiously
easy celebrating
semi-clarity
and sleeping now and then
perchance to undream
the cloudy days away ..............................